Sun's magnetic field about to flip, shake solar skirt

This image of a flare on 13 May 2013, shown on the left, was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory in light of 131 angstroms, a wavelength which is particularly good for capturing the intense heat of a solar flare

NASA/SDO

Every 11 years, the magnetic field of the Sun flips. This
powerful force that drive sunspots, solar flares and huge explosions of solar material, flips over, like a egg-timer
being tipped on its head, but messier.

And it's happening right now.

Inside the furnace that gives life to our planet, the incredible
heat strips atoms into their constituent nuclei and electrons,
which slosh around like water in an ocean. This "flow and turbulent
motion" of charged particles creates the Sun's magnetic field, says
Jonathan Eastwood, a lecturer in Space and Atmospheric Physics at
Imperial College London.

"At solar maximum, the magnetic field is just a big
mess"

Jonathan Eastwood

Across the solar system and beyond, the effect of this magnetic field is felt. It is carried out into space by the
solar wind, a stream of particles emanating from the Sun. As the
magnetic field stretches into space it creates a "current sheet"
that extends out from the Sun's equator.

Above the current sheet, the magnetic polarity is "North" and
below the sheet it is "South". In simple terms, it's like a frilly
dress of electrical current that stretches from the Sun's equator
all the way to Pluto and billions of kilometres beyond, splitting
the Sun's magnetic field.

Every 11 years, for reasons that are still unknown, the magnetic
field flips. North becomes South and South becomes North. But the
switch isn't as clean as a simple swap.

The flip coincides with a peak in solar activity. "Solar
maxiumum" as it is known, is when the Sun is feverish with activity. There are more sunspots, which are concentrated regions of magnetic field
bubbling up on the surface, and many more solar eruptions like
solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are caused by
the magnetic field loops bursting up out of the surface, and then
breaking, releasing huge amounts of energy -- when CMEs are
directed towards Earth they can disrupt
satellites and power grids.

"At solar maximum, the magnetic field is just a big mess," says
Eastwood. "Exactly how [it] reverses is still not well understood
[but] what we can see is that the magnetic field becomes much more
complicated".

Instead of a simple bar magnet structure, with a top and bottom,
the magnetic field structure becomes more octopus-like, with many
magnetic poles, instead of just two.

During this noisy phase, the hemispheres do not change polarity
necessarily at the same rate. As the Sun calms down, it returns to
a bar magnet structure, but with the polarity reversed.